Archive for: October, 2009

The Registries: .CA

With a renewal rate of 74% and an annual growth rate of 20%, .CA serves value for your Canadian domains customers. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) operates the .CA domain.

Disponible en Français au-dessous

Started in 1988, Growing Strong

The first .CA domain name was upei.ca, registered in 1988 by the University of Prince Edward Island. Back then, .CA was run by a group of volunteers at the University of British Columbia. In 2000, control of .CA was transferred to CIRA, a non-profit corporation that manages the .CA domain space on behalf of all Canadians.

.CA Today

With over 1.2 million .CA domains in existence today, .CA easily ranks in the top 20 of ccTLDs worldwide. According to CIRA, more than 400,000 times every minute someone initiates an action online that involves a .ca domain name. CIRA has a new campaign to help Resellers leverage this activity. It’s called “Get my Own .CA” and features great Canadian small businesses and organizations such as Midnight Poutine and Blade Tape (hockey stick tape). CIRA has targeted the small business market with ads appearing in Marketing Magazine, The Globe and Mail, CBC.ca and Yahoo Canada.

Why .CA? CIRA’s Annual Report has more statistics to help your customers when they consider .CA:

70% wanted to show their site was Canadian
60% of Canadians prefer .CA for online shopping
35% use their .CA for personal use
64% use their .CA companies/organizations

Adam Eisner, Director, Domain Services for OpenSRS on .CA and the Canadian Market:

Quick Facts:

The .CA registry is CIRA, a not-for-profit corporation
.CA domain names are reserved for Canadian people and organizations that meet CIRA Canadian Presence Requirements
Started by UBC researchers in 1987 and became available for the general public in December 2000
.CA, a ccTLD, has over 1. 2 million domains registered
Registering a .CA means you can apply to become a voting member of the organization

Available Resources:

Editor’s note: OpenSRS offers 25 different top-level domains (TLDs) for our resellers. This is the 15th post in a series intended to share information about the wide range of TLDs and to introduce you to some of the available resources that the various Registries provide.

Avec des renouvelements de 74% et une croissance annuelle de 20%, point-ca offre vos clients une aubaine. L’Autorité canadienne pour les enregistrements internet (ACEI) est le registre des noms de domaine .CA. En opération depuis une vingtaine d’années, le ccTLD .CA gère au-delà de 1,2 millions de noms de domaine:

Au moins 400,000 opérations chaque minute passent au cours de domaines point-ca. L’ACEI a récemment lancé « Get My Own .CA » , un projet démontrant des entreprises et organisations canadiennes, entre autres Midnight Poutine et Blade Tape. l’ACEI cible les petites entreprises avec ses annonces dans Marketing Magazine, Globeandmail.com, cbc.ca et Yahoo.ca.

Pourquoi point-ca? Le rapport annuel de l’ACEI pour 2009 offre quelques renseignements pour vos clients:

70% désire montrer aux visiteurs qu’il s’agit d’un site Web canadien

60% de canadiens préfèrent les domaines point-ca pour la commerce électronique

35% utilise point-ca pour tâches personelles

64% utilise point-ca pour compagnies ou organisations

Adam Eisner, Directeur de Domaines, au sujet de point-ca et le marché canadien:

Données:

Le registre point-ca est l’ACEI, un société du secteur privé à but non lucratif
Créé in 1987 par des bénévoles de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique et ouvert au publique en Décembre 2000
Point-ca, un ccTLD, gè au-delá de 1,2 million domaines
Comme titulaire, vous pouvez devenir membre de l’ACEI et aider à façonner l’avenir du Canada sur l’Internet
En Octobre 2009, l’ACEI a lancé un banc d’essai pour le DNSSEC, technologie importante pour avertier l’usurpation de sites web

Resources Disponibles:

Note de l’Éditeur: OpenSRS offre 25 domaines de tête (TLDs) à nos clients. Vous lizes l’article quinze dans une série visée a enseigner au sujet de les nombreux domaines de tête et partager les resources qu’offrent divers registres.

Special thanks to Ben Zanin, Senior NOC Analyst, OpenSRS for providing his translation assistance.

Celebrate Halloween with OpenSRS

1876799208_cb1a9a251d Here at OpenSRS we take Halloween very seriously. Each year, Tucows HQ in Toronto becomes a place filled with wacky costumes wandering the halls. It’s a sight that’s sure to put a scare in each of us!

“Best Decorated Service Guy” Competition

This year we’re holding a “Best Decorated Service Guy” competition as part of the fun. We’d love for you to take part–if you have one of our Service Guy action figures, you too can join in the scary fun! This Friday, October 30th, 2009, dress him up, and then take a picture and send it to halloween@opensrs.com or post it on Twitter or Flickr. Be sure to tag it #serviceguy so we can find it. We’ll post all entries right here on our blog!

Fear not if you don’t have a Service Guy. We would still love to see what you are doing at your company to celebrate Halloween–send those pictures our way too!

There’s prizes!

A special prize will go to the person or company with “Best Decorated Service Guy” as well as the company or group with the most spirited photo.

In the meantime, I’m off to track down some eye of newt and toe of frog for my witches brew.

ICANN 36 Opens With A Flurry of Activity

icann_meeting_sel_logo Although ICANN’s 36th International Meeting here in Seoul has been underway for less than two days, it has already been quite eventful.

At Monday morning’s session on new gTLDs, a number of people voiced their frustration at a lack of definitive timeline around their launch (remember that applications were originally scheduled to be accepted in the early part of 2010, but it appears at this point that timeline is unlikely to be met). In the afternoon, representatives from Afilias, a registry services provider, and Demand Media, parent company of Enom, had a unique and spirited debate on the topic of Registry-Registrar separation. The session, held as a debate, addressed whether registrars involved in new TLD bids should be allowed to operate a registrar which sold the extension as well. An informal poll where participants were asked to shout their approval for one side over the other reflected the polarizing nature of the issue, as the room seemed split.

The final session I attended Monday was an open meeting of the Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group (PEDNR-WG), which is examining topics related to the abilities of registrants to recover domain names post expiration. This group is still in its early stages, with further updates expected in the coming months.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the workshop on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), another highly-anticipated discussion topic at the meeting. During that session, it was announced that the IDN application process was expected to begin November 16 (subject to ICANN Board approval). This will allow ccTLD operators to offer their extensions in native scripts should they choose to do so.

All three sessions I attended were standing-room only, as was the IDN session. It is clear that this conference is touching upon a lot of hot-button issues that are going to have a significant impact on the future of the Internet.

Today (Tuesday) is Constituency Day, where various supporting organizations of ICANN get together to discuss relevant issues for a full day. Tucows’ CEO Elliot Noss and I will sit in the meeting of the Registrar Constituency alongside many other ICANN-accredited registrars, where we will discuss a wide range of topics affecting registrars industry-wide.

Editor’s note: For those not in Seoul, ICANN offers remote participation via its website that allows you to attend the meetings virtually, complete with a video and audio stream plus a chat window.

Thanks to ICANN for the photos on their Flickr page and for releasing them under a Creative Commons License.

ICANN 36 Preview: New CEO, New TLDs and More

ICANN’s 36th International Meeting, to be held next week in Seoul, Korea, promises to be an eventful one for a number of reasons.

icann_meeting_sel_logo The meeting will be the first under Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s new CEO. Beckstrom was confirmed as the CEO during the Sydney, Australia, meeting in June 2009, and has had a very busy few months since. Probably the most important development during his short tenure has been the Affirmation of Commitments announced in late September.

The Affirmation of Commitments is largely considered a very positive step in affirming ICANN as a global organization while solidifying its role in governing the Internet. For more insight into the impact of the Affirmation of Commitments, I highly recommend reading Tucows’ CEO Elliot Noss’ blog post on the topic.

gTLDs a “hot” topic

There will also be much discussion on the progress of new gTLDs at the conference. A few weeks ago, ICANN published a third version of the new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG), which outlines requirements and procedures for those interested in applying for a new domain extension (ICANN plans to accept proposals for a round of new extensions in 2010). Anticipated time lines for the introduction of new extensions and proposed measures to protect trademarks, two issues related to new gTLDs which have not yet been settled, will also be “hot” topics.

IDNs on the agenda

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will also be widely discussed. ICANN recently submitted a final proposal to “fast track” certain ccTLD extensions, and this proposal will be considered at the meeting by the ICANN board. If approved, the proposal will clear the way to introduce IDNs “after the dot” – that is, making domain extensions (and not just the name itself) available and operational in different language scripts.

I’ll provide some notes on the meeting once I’m on the ground in Seoul, as well as a wrap-up. Keep an eye on this space for updates.

New Customization Features in OpenSRS Storefront

Last week we rolled an update to OpenSRS Storefront that allows Resellers to edit the text on the home page and also to create a page for displaying and marketing any sales or promotions that Resellers may be running. Documentation has been updated to reflect the changes, but I thought I’d put together a quick tutorial showing how to do it. I’m trying something a bit different this time so instead of a video screencast, I’ve provided step by step instructions with screenshots. Let me know which one you think works better for you in the comments, if you wish.

And on a related note, we’re continuing to work on OpenSRS Storefront and we’d love to hear your opinions on how we can make it better. Either drop us a comment right here in the blog, or drop by the forum and join in the discussion there.

Click through to view the tutorials, or download a PDF version for easy printing.

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Archive for: October, 2009

The Registries: .CA

Celebrate Halloween with OpenSRS

ICANN 36 Opens With A Flurry of Activity

ICANN 36 Preview: New CEO, New TLDs and More

New Customization Features in OpenSRS Storefront

Become a Reseller

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